Evidence of meeting #14 for Official Languages in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was projects.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Guy Lauzon
Our meeting is now open to the public.
I want to welcome our special guests, Mr. DesRoches, Mr. Gauthier and Mr. Fortier. I believe that your presentation will be approximately 10 minutes long. Following your presentation, members representing the various parties will ask questions. Are you ready? I believe that you are going to begin with screen presentation.
9:10 a.m.
Hubert Gauthier President and Director General, Société Santé en français
Mr. Chair, I want to thank you and all the members of your committee for welcoming us here. We are delighted to have been invited to appear before you. Perhaps I should remind members that your committee supported the initiatives I am going to describe to you in a few moments, right from the start. I want to thank you for the support that you have shown us in recent years.
Mr. Chair, I want to congratulate you on your recent election as chair of this committee. It will be our pleasure to work with you and the members of your committee to ensure that our projects, which seek to guarantee access to services in French for francophones in minority communities, will be successful.
I am accompanied by two of my colleagues from the SSF board of directors. Donald DesRoches is Director of Acadian and Francophone Affairs for Prince Edward Island and Dr. Denis Fortier is regional chief of staff for the Regional Health Authority —Central Manitoba. My two colleagues reflect the make up of our board of directors, which consists of partners and others involved in health care, including doctors such as Dr. Fortier, government representatives, representatives of health care facilities or health care training institutions, and people from the community. All these people sit on the Société Santé en français board of directors.
I need to add that the chair of the board of directors, Ms. Rachel Bard, apologizes for not being here today. Ms. Bard is the Deputy Minister for the New Brunswick provincial government. As you know, there was an election there not so long ago, and new ministers have been appointed. She told me that she had to take care of her new minister. That is why she was unable to be with us today.
I want to take this opportunity to talk about the progress that has been made in the area of health care services in French for minority francophone communities. There are two or three things that I hope you remember more than anything else I may say today.
First, in September 2001, a study was done in cooperation with Health Canada what is called an advisory board, which still exists today and which I co-chair along with Mr. Nouvet from Health Canada. This committee discovered that more than half of the one million francophones living in minority communities did not have access to health care in French.
You may be wondering if this is a problem. Studies clearly show that there is a connection between the ability to obtain services in our mother tongue and the quality of care we receive. If we are unable to properly understand the professional, communication is diminished and, consequently, there will be health care problems, the doctor's instructions will be misunderstood or the prescription we are given will be misunderstood. Studies have clearly shown that the quality of services is clearly affected in the case of francophones who are unable to obtain services in their language. This is the first message. I think it is important to remember that we are addressing this problem. We are talking about the quality of services being provided to at least 500,000 francophones outside Quebec.
The study indicates that three important things need to be implemented in order to improve the situation for these francophones. The first thing is networking. Francophones outside Quebec need a place to discuss and address problems and propose solutions. Our organization was behind the implementation of 17 networks throughout the country. This means that there is a network in each province and each territory, except in Ontario, where there are four networks, and in New Brunswick, where there are three, given the population base in those regions. These 17 networks bring together the partners I mentioned earlier. We are all working together to achieve progress.
Mr. Chair, I want to highlight the fact that these networks are based on a model inspired by an idea put forward by the World Health Organization. We did not invent it; rather we borrowed it from other countries, and it is working.
When the partners work together, the projects are more successful. This reality underlies the principle of networking.
I must say that the Société Santé en français is not a lobby group, but rather a partner that wants to work with the federal and provincial governments to improve access to health care in French. I think that my message to you—this idea of partnership—is important. That is what our networks are doing with the front line workers.
Second, I want to talk about training. We said that it was important to be able to talk about our problems; however, there is a serious shortage of professionals: available doctors, nurses, social workers and other professionals able to provide services in French.
Serious problems have been identified. As a result, training was another very important priority. So, the training consortium was created and, over the past three or four years, there have been 1,500 more people enroll in health care training to become doctors, nurses and so forth. Already, there are nearly 300 graduates.
The consortium is one of the sister organizations with which we are collaborating. I would encourage you to speak with the consortium or invite it to speak to you about the important work it is doing. Ten colleagues and universities belong to this consortium.
Third, I want to talk about services. It is all fine and well to have networks and to be able to think, plan and organize. It is good to have professionals, but to do anything we need to have the means, the facilities and the ideas to ensure that the average citizen has better access tomorrow.
We have implemented over 70 projects and initiatives throughout the country, in order to improve accessibility. These projects are being conducted in cooperation with hospitals, community health care centres such as the ones in Cornwall, Saint-Boniface and New Brunswick and the one currently being set up in Edmonton. These are all examples of new and successful initiatives. A little later, one of my colleagues will tell you more about such projects.
We believe that these achievements would not have been possible without an investment from Health Canada. The networking was spread over a five-year period, and the funding was $2 million per year, for a total of $10 million. Training, which required the lion's share of the funding, cost $63 million over five years. Finally, services cost $20 million over a three-year period ending in March 2006. I will tell you more about this in a moment.
We would like to take two minutes to show you a video about one of our initiatives. I should point out that the people you will see are real people and real professionals. They are not actors. This is not something we made up: it is very real. We wanted to visit the front lines to see whether the services we are providing are working.
Are we ready? Technology is wonderful when it works.
[Audiovisual presentation]
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
9:20 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
It is because the French version is not subtitled. In the bilingual version, we did not translate what was said, rather we put subtitles. We could have shown either version. We chose to show this one because we felt that everyone would be able to understand it.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
It is impossible to understand everything when the presentation and everything else was written in English.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Sylvie Boucher Conservative Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Ms. Barbot, there are some anglophones on our side.
9:20 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
In this version, there are English subtitles when people speak French.
9:20 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
The entire translation is subtitled.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
Yes, but the title, the introduction of the various chapters and the last comments made were all in English and were not translated. Therefore you have a bilingual version: neither a unilingual anglophone nor a unilingual francophone could understand it, whereas if it were exclusively in French, the English viewers could benefit from the translation and vice versa.
9:20 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
We also have one exclusively in French. It is only in French; there are no subtitles.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
Exactly.
I imagine that there would be a translation for English speakers.
9:20 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
That's why there are subtitles in the other version.
9:20 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
Yes, I understand what you are saying.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Guy Lauzon
Thank you.
Do you have any other comments, Ms. Barbot?
Mr. Fortier.
9:20 a.m.
Denis Fortier Administrator, member of the Board of directors, Regional office of the health of the Center of Manitoba, Société Santé en français
I want to add some concrete examples to what Mr. Gauthier was saying. I'm the regional chief of staff for Central Manitoba, a rural doctor in Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes. This is a region southwest of Winnipeg that includes a number of small scattered francophone communities.
Mr. Gauthier talked about training. I am a supervisor of students and medical residents on behalf of the Consortium national de formation en santé or CNFS. This is one of the pillars that the SSF is talking about. A number of students and residents from Manitoba, Ottawa and soon Sherbrooke come to train with us. We believe that this can help with the recruiting and future retention of francophone doctors in our region.
I want to talk about networking. Until quite recently, I chaired the network in Manitoba, the Conseil Communauté en santé or CCS. Recently, perhaps two years ago, the Government of Manitoba made the CCS the official representative of francophones in the areas of health care and social services in Manitoba. This is quite official. In any case, this gives it more credibility overall and even at the national level. Of course, our network is part of the national network, which is bigger. Thanks to the cooperation of the SSF and Health Canada, our network was able to take action.
The third thing that Hubert mentioned was services. We receive funding from Health Canada through the SSF. A number of projects were able to go forward in Manitoba as a result of these funds. The project I'm most interested in is being implemented near me in Notre Dame de Lourdes. The project is to develop a community or primary health care centre. Using a $30,000 grant, we studied the needs of the community based on the 12 health determinants. Next, we designed a primary health care centre. In addition to the $30,000 grant, the community raised $1.5 million for this project. As a result, the Government of Manitoba joined in and added $500,000. I will not name all the partners, because there are approximately 30 of them. Construction is currently underway.
There is a value-added factor to all this. We will become more of a training centre, not only for doctors, but also for other health care professionals. We have attracted the attention of Canada Health Infoway and Telehealth Manitoba. They have seen our project, and we are part of a pilot project using cutting-edge technology, teleconsultations and teleconference calls. Our goal is to improve access to services in French in our region and to network our centre, because it was networked with other francophone centres in Manitoba. I keep calling it a francophone centre, but it is really a bilingual centre because, in Manitoba, it is clearly bilingual. I consider this an added value. We provide services in French, but we can certainly also provide them in English.
I just wanted to give a concrete example to illustrate what Mr. Gauthier was saying.
9:25 a.m.
Donald DesRoches Administrator, Member of the Board of Directors, Delegate of the Minister for the acadian Businesses and French-speaking person of Prince Edward Island, Société Santé en français
I am co-chair of Prince Edward Island's French Health Services Network and work for the provincial government. I basically came here to tell you that the Government of Prince Edward Island is a true partner of the Société Santé en français with regard to the work it carries out.
Our government adopted a French-Language Services Act in 2000. We are now working to implement this legislation in order to ensure comparable high-quality services in all areas of government jurisdiction. The support of the Société Santé en français and the various existing funding components allow the Government of Prince Edward Island to meet its objective in a timely fashion. We have set out to broaden access to French-language health care services throughout Prince Edward Island. There are a number of projects, including the creation of a website that lists the names of the francophone and bilingual health care professionals who are able to provide services on Prince Edward Island.
It is our objective to broaden access to French-language health care services. It is one thing to ensure that there are sufficient bilingual health care professionals working on Prince Edward Island; it is another to ensure that people have access to them. With the support of the Société Santé en français, we are achieving the objective: broadening access to French-language health care services and professionals.
I can also say a word about the Société Santé en français. The organization has already taken part several times in the national Ministerial Conference on Francophone Affairs. The next conference will be held here, in Ottawa, next week. It will be co-chaired by Ms. Verner and the provincial and territorial ministers responsible for the Canadian Francophonie. The ministerial conference has already expressed to the federal government that it is a key supporter of the work done by the Société Santé en français and hopes to see its work continue and improve.
9:30 a.m.
President and Director General, Société Santé en français
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, I would like to add that our 17 networks have all tried to address the following question, which is often put to us: what does it take to improve French-language health care services once and for all?
In the past year and a half, we have done the necessary planning to address that question. Obviously, we do not have time to go into all the details. However, the enormous amount of work accomplished by all our partners shows that the issue of improving services is being addressed.
Of course, we hope that your committee will support us in order to continue moving in that direction and putting our plans into practice tomorrow morning. We will also need the cooperation of our communities — they have to continue being involved — and of the provincial governments. By the way, I am currently on a tour to meet with the health ministers of all Canadian provinces. I have so far met seven or eight of them. We have received excellent support from the various provincial departmental authorities.
We will also be needing continued support from the federal government, which will have to show leadership by lending its support and helping us to ensure that $30,000 amounts turn into several millions of dollars in order to deliver concrete services to Canadians.
In this respect, I said earlier that funding for the organization of services ended in March 2006. We know that your government is currently processing a sizable budget, covering our 2006-07 activities. It is our understanding that the issue is settled. However, what has yet to be resolved, is the future, that is to say 2007-08 and beyond. People must have the sense that there is time for the projects listed in these volumes to be carried out.
I will stop here for now, Mr. Chair. We can continue by answering questions. Thank you.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Guy Lauzon
I would like to thank the three of you.
I would also like to clear up an issue before we move on to questions.
Dr. Fortier, you said that your centre in Saint-Boniface, I believe...